Guest Post: Question Authority - How Mad Magazine's ethos still matters

Michael J. Socolow, University of Maine

Mad Magazine is still hanging on. In April, it launched a reboot, jokingly calling it its “first issue.”

But in terms of cultural resonance and mass popularity, it’s largely lost its clout.

At its apex in the early 1970s, Mad’s circulation surpassed 2 million. As of 2017, it was 140,000.

As strange as it sounds, I believe the “usual gang of idiots” that produced Mad was performing a vital public service, teaching American adolescents that they shouldn’t believe everything they read in their textbooks or saw on TV.

The magazine taught its readers to never swallow what they’re served.
Nick Lehr/The Conversation via Jasperdo, CC BY-NC-ND

Mad preached subversion and unadulterated truth-telling when so-called objective journalism remained deferential to authority. While newscasters regularly parroted questionable government claims, Mad was calling politicians liars when they lied. Long before responsible organs of public opinion like The New York Times and the CBS Evening News discovered it, Mad told its readers all about the credibility gap. The periodical’s skeptical approach to advertisers and authority figures helped raise a less credulous and more critical generation in the 1960s and 1970s.

Today’s media environment differs considerably from the era in which Mad flourished. But it could be argued that consumers are dealing with many of the same issues, from devious advertising to mendacious propaganda.

While Mad’s satiric legacy endures, the question of whether its educational ethos - - its implicit media literacy efforts – remains part of our youth culture is less clear.

A merry-go-round of media panics

In my research on media, broadcasting and advertising history, I’ve noted the cyclical nature of media panics and media reform movements throughout American history.

The pattern goes something like this: A new medium gains popularity. Chagrined politicians and outraged citizens demand new restraints, claiming that opportunists are too easily able to exploit its persuasive power and dupe consumers, rendering their critical faculties useless. But the outrage is overblown. Eventually, audience members become more savvy and educated, rendering such criticism quaint and anachronistic.

During the penny press era of the 1830s, periodicals often fabricated sensational stories like the “Great Moon Hoax” to sell more copies. For a while, it worked, until accurate reporting became more valuable to readers.

During the ‘Great Moon Hoax,’ the New York Sun claimed to have discovered a colony of creatures on the moon.
Wikimedia Commons

When radios became more prevalent in the 1930s, Orson Welles perpetrated a similar extraterrestrial hoax with his infamous “War of the Worlds” program. This broadcast didn’t actually cause widespread fear of an alien invasion among listeners, as some have claimed. But it did spark a national conversation about radio’s power and audience gullibility.

Aside from the penny newspapers and radio, we’ve witnessed moral panics about dime novels, muckraking magazines, telephones, comic books, television, the VCR, and now the internet. Just as Congress went after Orson Welles, we see Mark Zuckerberg testifying about Facebook’s facilitation of Russian bots.

Holding up a mirror to our gullibility

But there’s another theme in the country’s media history that’s often overlooked. In response to each new medium’s persuasive power, a healthy popular response ridiculing the rubes falling for the spectacle has arisen.

For example, in “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” Mark Twain gave us the duke and the dauphin, two con artists traveling from town to town exploiting ignorance with ridiculous theatrical performances and fabricated tall tales.

They were proto-purveyors of fake news, and Twain, the former journalist, knew all about selling buncombe. His classic short story “Journalism in Tennessee” excoriates crackpot editors and the ridiculous fiction often published as fact in American newspapers.

Then there’s the great P.T. Barnum, who ripped people off in marvelously inventive ways.

“This way to the egress,” read a series of signs inside his famous museum. Ignorant customers, assuming the egress was some sort of exotic animal, soon found themselves passing through the exit door and locked out.

They might have felt ripped off, but, in fact, Barnum had done them a great – and intended – service. His museum made its customers more wary of hyperbole. It employed humor and irony to teach skepticism. Like Twain, Barnum held up a funhouse mirror to America’s emerging mass culture in order to make people reflect on the excesses of commercial communication.

‘Think for yourself. Question authority’

Mad Magazine embodies this same spirit. Begun originally as a horror comic, the periodical evolved into a satirical humor outlet that skewered Madison Avenue, hypocritical politicians and mindless consumption.

Teaching its adolescent readers that governments lie – and only suckers fall for hucksters – Mad implicitly and explicitly subverted the sunny optimism of the Eisenhower and Kennedy years. Its writers and artists poked fun at everyone and everything that claimed a monopoly on truth and virtue.

“The editorial mission statement has always been the same: ‘Everyone is lying to you, including magazines. Think for yourself. Question authority,’” according to longtime editor John Ficarra.

That was a subversive message, especially in an era when the profusion of advertising and Cold War propaganda infected everything in American culture. At a time when American television only relayed three networks and consolidation limited alternative media options, Mad’s message stood out.

Just as intellectuals Daniel Boorstin, Marshall McLuhan and Guy Debord were starting to level critiques against this media environment, Mad was doing the same – but in a way that was widely accessible, proudly idiotic and surprisingly sophisticated.

For example, the implicit existentialism hidden beneath the chaos in every “Spy v. Spy” panel spoke directly to the insanity of Cold War brinksmanship. Conceived and drawn by Cuban exile Antonio Prohías, “Spy v. Spy” featured two spies who, like the United States and the Soviet Union, both observed the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction. Each spy was pledged to no one ideology, but rather the complete obliteration of the other – and every plan ultimately backfired in their arms race to nowhere.

Mad skewered those who mindlessly supported the people who controlled the levers of power.
Jasperdo, CC BY-NC-SA

The cartoon highlighted the irrationality of mindless hatred and senseless violence. In an essay on the plight of the Vietnam War soldier, literary critic Paul Fussell once wrote that U.S. soldiers were “condemned to sadistic lunacy” by the monotony of violence without end. So too the “Spy v. Spy” guys.

As the credibility gap widened from the Johnson to Nixon administrations, the logic of Mad‘s Cold War critique became more relevant. Circulation soared. Sociologist Todd Gitlin – who had been a leader of the Students for a Democratic Society in the 1960s – credited Mad with serving an important educational function for his generation.

“In junior high and high school,” he wrote, “I devoured it.”

A step backward?

And yet that healthy skepticism seems to have evaporated in the ensuing decades. Both the run-up to the Iraq War and the acquiescence to the carnival-like coverage of our first reality TV star president seem to be evidence of a widespread failure of media literacy.

We’re still grappling with how to deal with the internet and the way it facilitates information overload, filter bubbles, propaganda and, yes, fake news.

But history has shown that while we can be stupid and credulous, we can also learn to identify irony, recognize hypocrisy and laugh at ourselves. And we’ll learn far more about employing our critical faculties when we’re disarmed by humor than when we’re lectured at by pedants. A direct thread skewering the gullibility of media consumers can be traced from Barnum to Twain to Mad to “South Park” to The Onion.

While Mad’s legacy lives on, today’s media environment is more polarized and diffuse. It also tends to be far more cynical and nihilistic. Mad humorously taught kids that adults hid truths from them, not that in a world of fake news, the very notion of truth was meaningless. Paradox informed the Mad ethos; at its best, Mad could be biting and gentle, humorous and tragic, and ruthless and endearing – all at the same time.

That’s the sensibility we’ve lost. And it’s why we need an outlet like Mad more than ever.

Michael J. Socolow, Associate Professor, Communication and Journalism, University of Maine

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Guest Post: Dave Chappelle Understands Free Trade Better Than Most Politicians

Chappelle’s words of wisdom should be inscribed on plaques to be placed on the wall in the White House.


by Allan Golombek

Dave Chappelle is a great comedian. But he may be an even better economist. He certainly understands free trade a lot better than some of the people who are currently in charge of directing U.S. trade policy.

In a recent comedy routine, Chappelle provided a succinct explanation of why it makes more sense for the United States to import some goods from China rather than try to pursue a protectionist trade policy aimed at producing everything domestically.

The Difference Between Wearing and Making Nikes

Chappelle summarized President Trump’s position vis-à-vis China: “I’m gonna go to China, and I’m gonna get these jobs from China and bring ‘em back to America.” Chappelle then interrupted his Trump soliloquy, asking: “For what, so iPhones can be $9,000? Leave that job in China where it belongs … I wanna wear Nikes, I don’t wanna make those things. Stop trying to give us Chinese jobs.”

Chappelle’s words of wisdom should be inscribed on plaques to be placed on the wall in the White House, the office of the US Trade Representative, and the Department of Commerce — and the trade ministries of some other countries. The reason people buy imported goods is because they feel they are getting a better deal for their money than if the product was made domestically.

Would it make sense for us all to make our own footwear, assemble our own smartphones, grow our own food, and — for that matter — build our own homes? If we tried to do that, where would we get the time and energy to treat cancer, create new technologies and medications, or give Pilates lessons? If we had to make our own iPhones and Nikes, would we be able to afford to buy them? And what would we have to give up to be able to?

Moreover, by offshoring the assembly of iPhones and Nikes, we actually keep domestic jobs competitive. Most of the value added to an iPhone occurs in the United States — Chinese workers assembling them and adding some of the parts just makes Americans more competitive. Nike employs tens of thousands of people in Vietnam, but the company also employs thousands in metropolitan Portland — jobs that pay better, jobs that can be maintained only by offshoring some of the less complex and lower-paying work.

Warning: NSFW Language

An Economy Needs More than Exports

Growing an economy is not a matter of turning imports into exports. Robust economies do more of both. The opportunity to import actually helps achieve productivity and prosperity more than the opportunity to export because it does more to broaden choice. Importing widens the circle of potential suppliers competing to meet the needs of intermediate producers. When a country opens its borders to imported goods, it facilitates comparative advantage, importing inputs from countries that are more efficient at making them — and thereby making domestically-produced final products more competitive.

On the other hand, countries that have tried to fight reality and produce everything for themselves have paid the price. In which economy would you rather live — North or South Korea? In the early 1970s, both countries had roughly the same GDP per capita. One of the reasons South Korea has raced ahead is that North Korea has pursued autarky. South Korea has become so much wealthier not simply because it exports far more, but because it exports and imports far more. By buying things they need from other countries, they free themselves to do the things they are best at doing. Importing is not a necessary evil; it is a necessary ingredient.

Unfortunately, many look at imports as money leaving an economy instead of value entering it. Many look back fondly to a time when almost all goods sold in the United States were manufactured in the United States. Perhaps we could resurrect that world — but only if we were willing to give up the iPhones, Nikes, laptops, medical technologies, and all of the other modern goods that trade has made possible.

The reason we are able to maintain a 21st-century lifestyle is because we pursue a 21st-century economy. Bringing back the 1970s economy would also entail bringing back the 1970s lifestyle that came with it.

By importing from developing countries, we are in effect hiring people at a cheaper price than we could obtain at home. There is a word for the result — “progress.”

Reprinted from RealClearMarkets.

Allan Golombek is a Senior Director at the White House Writers Group.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Nick Robinson and William H. Macy Discuss 'Krystal' in Charlottesville

This past weekend, the Virginia Film Festival celebrated its 30th anniversary in Charlottesville, with several prestige-level feature films, including the coming-of-age drama Call Me by Your Name and the coming-of-age comedy Krystal.

Krystal was screened on Friday evening, followed by a panel discussion with actor-director William H. Macy, the film's lead actor Nick Robinson, and producer Rachel Winter.

Mitch Levine, founder and director of The Film Festival Group, moderated the panel.

According to the Virginia Film Festival's program notes,

Nick Robinson

Tyler Ogburn lives a sheltered life due to a heart condition that prevents him from going to college, playing sports, or pursuing love. That is until enticing ex-stripper and former heroin addict Krystal comes into his life, and he starts attending her Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in order to spend time with her. Also complicating Ogburn’s efforts to pursue Krystal is her son, Bobby, who is confined to a wheelchair and serves as the street-smart voice of reason for the dysfunctional family. This is the third feature from director-actor William H. Macy (Fargo, Shameless).

The cast of Krystal also includes Rosario Dawson, Kathy Bates, Grant Gustin, William Fichtner, and Felicity Huffman.

The video above was recorded at the Paramount Theater in downtown Charlottesville, Virginia, on Friday evening, November 10, 2017.

From the Archives: TV star Tina Fey argues for importance of the arts at University of Virginia

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on September 14, 2013. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016. I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

TV star Tina Fey argues for importance of the arts at University of Virginia

Award-winning actress, writer, and producer Tina Fey was the inaugural speaker at the University of Virginia's President’s Speaker Series for the Arts on September 14. Fey, a 1992 graduate of the University, was introduced by UVA president Teresa Sullivan and, following her lecture, engaged in a Q&A with drama professor Robert Chapel. Virginia Film Festival director Jody Kielbasa opened the evening's proceedings.

In a wide-ranging, hour-long address that drew on her experiences on stage in high school and college, in television on Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock, and as a mother of two young daughters, Fey discussed the importance of the arts – including music, theatre, film, and graphic arts – to society and human fulfillment.

Fey singled out three artists that she particularly admires and views as role models: British feminist playwright Caryl Churchill (Cloud Nine, Top Girls, Mad Forest); stand-up comedian Chris Rock; and Broadway composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim (Into the Woods, Follies).

These three artists, she explained, “meant a lot to me,” saying that, although she had often acknowledged the influence of comediennes like Mary Tyler Moore, Gilda Radner, and Carol Burnett, “I've never really talked about these particular people whose work really thrills me and really inspires me, which is the way I think art should make you feel.”

Caryl Churchill

Churchill's work, she said, is “so fascinating to me because it really made you think about what you think is normal and what is deviant and what is societally acceptable. It didn't tell you what to think, but it made you think about it.”

The things she “loves most about Caryl Churchill's writing,” Fey explained, are that she writes “spare dialogue,” that she plays around with theatrical conventions, and that “she inspires me to write politically, to try to write about something, to write about things that are important.”

On that latter point, Fey gave the example of her film Mean Girls, costarring Lindsay Lohan.

That movie, she said, was a high school comedy but also “intended to be a jumping-off point for a conversation about what they call 'relational aggression' among girls."

"And we fixed it; the movie fixed it,” she added sarcastically.

The TV series 30 Rock, she explained, was meant to explore gender, class, and racial differences among the main characters, Liz Lemon, Jack Donaghy, and Tracy Jordan.

Chris Rock

What she admires about Chris Rock, Fey said, is that he is “the greatest stand-up comedian of his generation, of my generation.”

Rock, she explained, has a special ability to “look closely, to look at the world really, really, really closely and notice something that's true, that no one's ever said before, and then say it. Call out something that no one's ever said out loud before. That's the best way to write a joke because only the truth is funny.”

Rock's social and (sometimes) political commentary, Fey noted, is sometimes too vulgar to repeat in front of a general audience like the one gathered in the McIntire Amphitheatre, but it is no less sharp-edged and relevant because of that.

Stephen Sondheim

“Obviously, the third artist in this completely organic triumvirate of my favorite people, is musical theater composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim,” Fey said, noting that she used to watch the VHS copy of Into the Woods every Friday night in UVA's Clemons Library.

Sondheim “is the master of many things,” she said, recommending his two books on lyric-writing to the audience. “My favorite thing about him is that he's the master of a beautiful song in a creepy context,” giving as an example “Not While I'm Around” from Sweeney Todd, as well as the show Assassins.

Like Fey, Sondheim is in the theatre because “he's interested in communication with audiences.”

What she has hoped to have learned from Sondheim, Fey said, are to “set the level of difficulty really high … and to challenge your audience, expect them to pay attention and to be smart, expect them to love language.”

Sondheim's work is “so finished,” she said, “it's made with so much care,” adding that she and her colleagues at 30 Rock would treat their script pages “as though they were going to the Smithsonian.”

“We would check every detail of the set because it's your work. It doesn't matter if it's a school play or a dumb TV show. It's your work. You should care about it so much that people get annoyed with you.”

Another lesson Fey learned from Sondheim is that it's OK to make things that are not for everyone. Setting out to create a huge commercial success is like “a recipe for Cream of Wheat.” She suggested that the “best-selling book in the world,” Fifty Shades of Grey, was written by a malfunctioning ATM machine.

“Money is not the way to measure success in the arts,” Fey concluded.